Spectrum 2.0

Review of 'Snowball'

I purchased the game mid 1984 after it got a glowing review in Crash by the super adventurer Derek Brewster.

You play the part of the intrepid secret agent Kim Kimberly , your mission is to safeguard the snowball 9 starship on its interstellar voyage when – you guessed , something goes wrong and you awake in a freezer-coffin. Pull the lever , light unfolds and you’re thrown into a highly complex text adventure with puzzles galore , nightingale robots , colour coded lifts and a crew to be rescued !

The main task is to reach the engine room and correct the faults that have occurred during the journey , getting there is another matter altogether , the starship itself is huge and its fairly easy to get lost amongst all the locations and those nightingale robots mentioned earlier will cut you to shreds should they catch you.

I remember getting almost nowhere years ago and it was consigned to the shelf for the odd game now and again , but playing it again for this review and it does seem a lot easier to make your way round the ship , the puzzles are far easier than I remembered , a lot of repeating instructions / going back and forth across locations to complete each set task , particularly the colour coded tickets and sheets which hit you hard towards the middle of the game.

The atmosphere provided by the detailed location descriptions is pure level 9 , its almost as if you are reading a decent science fiction book at times , the locations are very well described and set the scene perfectly.

Snowball was released late in 1983 and is the first part of the silicon dreams trilogy , just in case you fancy having a go at those they are Return to Eden and the Worm in Paradise respectively , sequels both featured graphic locations as well as text.

Id recommend snowball to anyone who fancies a bit of a challenge , but doesn’t mind the lack of any graphics at all , once you delve a bit further into the game it really can get quite tense , they certainly don’t make them like this anymore – whether that’s a good or bad thing – you decide !